Balanchine's Mythologies, Their Care and Feeding Jay Rogoff (bio) From George Balanchine's earliest efforts as a choreographer, mythology and allegory have inspired the theme and shaped the structure of many of his ballets. Of his two oldest surviving works, Apollo (1928), draws on Greek myth, and Prodigal Son (1929) on biblical parable, yet both ballets—and later ones, as well—turned mythic narrative inside out, their purpose not to teach us about these antique stories, or to inculcate moral lessons, but to achieve a purer, modernist aim: to reveal the expressiveness of dancing. Balanchine considered mythic source material not as the raison d'être for a ballet, but as a means of discovering the symbolic feelings movement could convey and extending the range of ballet's vocabulary. Even with an assigned libretto, the events of the story provided only incidental guidance; the essential values lay in the musical score. In the years between Suzanne Farrell's 1975 return to the New York City Ballet, after five years away, and Balanchine's death in 1983, he created at least half a dozen new roles for her. Almost all of these late ballets suggest mythic or allegorical interpretations, but unlike his early ballets, none of them uses narrative as a means, though they comment indirectly on the return of the ballerina who was his last great muse. In Tzigane (1975), he dressed her not in classical white or pink, but in flame red, a gypsy wanton who had tried her fortune abroad, with other companies and choreographers. In the final section of Vienna Waltzes (1977), Farrell danced with an invisible partner, suggesting that no man was good enough—in either skill or merit—to waltz with her. (In Anne Belle and Deborah Dickson's excellent 1996 documentary, Suzanne Farrell: Elusive Muse, she describes dancing this sequence in her farewell performance, six years after Balanchine's death, and thinking, "How nice: George and I are dancing.") In his 70s, Balanchine's myths grew increasingly personal but also increasingly elliptical, and in two of his greatest late works, Chaconne (1976) and Mozartiana (1981), Farrell provided his mythic inspiration. Both ballets enact the Return of Suzanne Farrell, but even though her spirit suffuses them, they still have less to do with her than with their music. That fact allows them to endure and thrive in NYCB's repertory four decades later. The myth remains, should we wish to pursue it, but the choreography takes primacy. The music, in turn, allowed Balanchine to celebrate Farrell's extraordinary virtuosity in choreography that he knew would be passed on to other dancers, some perhaps recalling Farrell's ethereality, others making the ballet look quite different. NYCB's 2018 winter season opened in January with all-Balanchine programs that included Mozartiana [End Page 477] with Maria Kowroski, the most elegantly Farrell-like ballerina since Farrell, and Chaconne with Sara Mearns, who can look, by turns, exquisitely classical and outlandishly dramatic. Despite these translations, both ballets thrive, and both look like masterpieces. Balanchine, who ran NYCB for 35 years, accepted that his ballets would change over time, that they were not museum pieces, and that new performers would illuminate new aspects of them while casting others into shadow. Just as ballets metamorphose, passing from dancer to dancer, ballet companies also undergo transformation, and NYCB is experiencing a great change right now. Peter Martins, the brilliant dancer who succeeded Balanchine as his protégé and directed the company for another 35 years (the first six years in tandem with Jerome Robbins), announced his immediate retirement on New Year's Day, 2018. He stepped down under pressure—he had already been suspended, accused of sexually inappropriate and violent behavior toward some of his dancers, charges that NYCB's board of directors later dismissed after an independent investigation. While the company seeks a new leader, a committee of four capable people in their 30s has been running it: former dancers and current ballet masters Craig Hall, Rebecca Krohn, and Jonathan Stafford, and current soloist and choreographer-in-residence Justin Peck. A company that has had only two leaders in 70 years, needless to say, finds itself in a momentous position. For...
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Jan 1, 2020
O V Gasnikova 
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